Thursday 28 February 2008

Feisty Photog Fights Formidable Foe: Ron Diamond Challenges Devimco in Griffintown Development Dispute

Ron Diamond is a feisty guy. A commercial photographer who only shoots digital photos “when the client insists,” he has high aesthetic standards and is unafraid to take on the powers that be. Earlier this week he dared Devimco, the development company that wants to redo the Griffintown area of Montreal, to buy out his lease in a building which Devimco wants to tear down. According to The Gazette, Ron wants $1 million, or he won’t budge.

He is quoted as saying he spent $10,000 renovating the space into a photographic studio, and he doesn’t want to be chased out.

That sounds like Ron. He’s the treasurer of the Electronic Rights Defence Committee, and each time we’ve talked lately he’s railed over the Griffintown plans. The development would be a disaster, he says, adding that he objects strongly to the way the city of Montreal appears to be encouraging it. On Tuesday at the hearings into the ERDC’s request for class action authorization, he mentioned that he was planning to make a protest at a “consultation” on Griffintown that night.

Good for him. If he had e-mail, I’d send him a note of congratulations. But just as he prefers taking pictures with film, he doesn’t truck with computers much. When the ERDC has an email exchange on some subject, I end up printing it out and mailing it to him. His pictures are great though, I think. That's his photo of me that I use for my blogspot.com profile, and it's better than any pix that's ever been taken of me.

The world needs more talented contrarians like him.